Is Premier Pacific Vineyards Dead?

[excerpt:] . . . PPV’s largest project is the one that has given it greatest notoriety. Preservation Ranch would involve clear-cutting roughly 1,700 acres of redwood forest and ripping out the roots, installing more than 80 miles of six-foot high fencing that would fragment wildlife habitat across the majority of the parcel, building 90 miles of road. There would also be a gravel mining operation, and of course the various industrial-scale water diversions necessary to fill the project’s proposed 40 reservoirs. At various turns, Premier Pacific has touted a large subdivision as part of the project.

The Gualala River has already been battered by years of industrial logging and, more recently, intensive wine-grape cultivation. The destruction of so much redwood forest would damage the watershed further, on a massive scale.

In the past year, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, North Bay Bohemian, Huffington Post, and most of all this fine publication have featured stories on Preservation Ranch. Friends of the Gualala River, the local non-profit with members primarily based in Annapolis and Gualala, has helped collect nearly 100,000 signatures on a petition opposing both Preservation Ranch and a proposal by Spanish wine giant Codorniu to convert around 170 acres of redwoods to grapes on a nearby parcel…